Hm. On the one hand, I’m really interested in the concept that consumerism has opened up creative spaces for people that you wouldn’t necessarily expect. We tend to think of modern consumerism as being incompatible with other kinds of social structures or that the people who are using these things are some how “primative”. And the people in the images are lovely.

Then again, it does smack of the imperial “look what I discovered, aren’t they exotic” vibe a bit too much for my tastes. So it begs the question if these sorts of engagements can ever be truly neutral or if they’ll always be about the western imperial gaze.

It’s also due to a lack of alternatives I’d imagine. When you live in a society that demands cash for the exchange of goods, including land, then you have to find a way to make cash. It’s a long standing problem of the peasantry the world around, for these past few centuries.